Share this:

We’ll have a very big chat with the XCOM: Enemy Unknown devs at Firaxis up for you at some point in the next few days, but in the meantime an American magazine has released a few more screenshots of the strategy reimagining of darling old X-COM. The magazine’s post also shows off some of the tactics you’ll be using, how a battle might play out, a little on the (inevitably) contentious new movement/action system and perks and – you’ll like this – the destructible environents. Plus a close-up peek at the new-look, slighty Stroggy Mutons. I’ve snuck a couple of shots below and hope it won’t result in a threat, but there are many more, plus vital descriptions over here and over here.
Conveniently explosive gas station:

Enviro-boom:

A more familiar view:

Sectoids, sprinting, cover:

Class and perk stuff aside – impossible to make useful comment until I’ve tried that stuff myself – it’s looking more like it, isn’t it? The American magazine’s dripfeed of information a bit of a tease in a way, but I suppose that’s the point. I’ll be bringing you much more detail very soon though, promise.

I find it difficult to understand people who think adding in an optional, radically different game mode, can be done quite easily and wouldn’t hurt the other game modes. I’d rather they keep their development focus on balancing/features etc. for a single game, and not two.

They already say that they have a mode for fans of the original although I forgot what they are calling it. I just want to know if this mode has enough features more like the original for it to seem like a more interesting game to me. If they are serious about this mode then they should put some effort into it in my opinion.

Of course it would take time, of course it would take effort, nothing in coding (or life) is truly free. However, only the developers themselves would be able to decide how much effort it would be to provide these kind of features just as only the individual customers can decide how much they are truly worth. Personally, I don’t care for the specific options Cinnamon mentioned but I do believe that options and suggestions are good in general.

I find it odd that the argument seems to be that “it’s not worth the effort because very few people want it”, surely that attitude is the reason why games are being “dumbed down” and are so homogenous now (and why Syndicate is an FPS now).

Ah, don’t worry mate. I’m with you on having an optional game mode. Yes, it’ll take additional time and resources, but it would be a cool feature and wouldn’t, necessarily, hurt the game experience as it was originally envisioned. Even if it was simply a player-only tweak, giving you additional options while the aliens did their move/action thing like they would in the normal game, I would be pretty happy.

I recently tried to play Terror from the Deep and honestly I couldn’t bear it. I have no idea how I had the patience to reload saves back in the day to keep my aquanauts from the impending disaster waiting around every goddamned corner.

No, everything was certainly not better back in the day. Let’s hope these devs can keep what worked and improve upon what didn’t!

I think this is a good idea for an optional mode, but I think that most people that respond here have their brains on auto pilot. He says that he wants the RPG systems to be disabled in the new X-COM and fair enough: I mean, most RPG elements are really shit.

What people seem to notice though is that he says ‘1994 mode’ and get the impression that he wants to play the same game, but with better graphics. You’re all obviously wrong, since it’s all about the removal of the shitty RPG mechanics that he wants to be able to do without having to wait three years for a mod.

I’m not hopeful about RPG elements in this game. You know what you get when you blend RPG and strategy? Dawn of War 2. Sure the original X-COM: UFO Defense have RPG elements too but they’re there to compliment the game with some randomness and more subtle instead of telling the player which person that should use the auto cannon and who should use nothing but pistols.

It’s a very fine line. A certain degree of streamlining or other “quality-of-life” changes are welcome. When those changes come at the expense of gameplay depth is when there’s a problem. Dragon Age: Origins vs. Dragon Age 2 is a prime example of the developer sacrificing WAY too much gameplay for the sake of streamlining.

None of us have actually played or even seen a video of this game yet, so why all the arguments? God forbid you may actually like this game for what it is, and if you don’t then that’s a real shame. Either way, how about we reserve all this until we have a little bit more information, hm?

Don’t forget trial end error to find out which of the slight variations of Sound Blaster 16/AWE/Pro/Compatable will actually get you sound, ideally in stereo, and trying to remember the IRQ for it and high and low DMA settings if it doesn’t quite autodetect right.

(When you kvetch about “Windows bloat” and how things should be written “to the metal”, this is the past you’re crying to have back.)

Options do more than just add dev time… if only they only did that. What they do is increase, exponentially when they interact with each other, the complexity of your software, and make it much harder to debug and polish.

Quick explanation for those who have never made a large (i.e. several thousands of lines of codes) program in their lives. What happens is that when getting to the game mechanic affected by the option, the programmer instead of just implementing it must then branch into IF option A THEN… ELSE THEN, which makes the code harder to make, understand and test. Then both in branch “A” and in branch “not A” you get another branch for option B which interacts with option A, and so on. You can get around the huge conditional structures that ensue by using object-oriented programming techniques and by swapping out one class for another depending on the option, but those structures are even more costly to make and maintain: they help to manage the problem but only move it elsewhere in a sense.

In other words if you ask for both many game-changing options and a bug-free game released on time, you’re an idiot.

“I recently tried to play Terror from the Deep and honestly I couldn’t bear it. I have no idea how I had the patience to reload saves back in the day to keep my aquanauts from the impending disaster waiting around every goddamned corner.”

They have. Thin Men are a new foe, and arguably the Cyberdisc has gotten such an update that it might as well be new. On the flip side Sectoids are the same (and very similar in appearance) while Mutons are the same in functionality, but with a much more shock-troop-appropriate look instead of the green onesie. Check out link to gameinformer.com

Well, we’ve already seen the Alien controlled, impostor G-Men as enemies… so that’s something at least. I think there will be some new enemies, but at the same time they’ll likely keep them quiet I would reckon, so as not to spoil any surprise.

Also, you have to remember, when the first couple screenshots came out and the G-men were spotted, there was a Daily Mail level OUTRAGE going on… Tantrums about enemies that weren’t in the original (sacrilege), certainty that they would be the ONLY enemy type (progressively tougher G-men with progressively better guns, and that’s all), that sort of thing. So I wouldn’t really blame them if they tried to concentrate on the ‘familiar’ for the next few rounds of publicity.

Can we please stop this? It’s not unreasonable to hope it won’t offer less strategic options than the 1994 game. This has nothing to do with innovation. I wouldn’t even mind the FPS approach if it didn’t look so shallow and uninspired.

So far the Friaxis game looks promising. I just hope they don’t polish out the ridiculous depth and amounts of micromanaging that made the original game so special. I wouldn’t even mind a game-mode (i.e., a difficulty setting) that allows you to skip the more tedious bits, but it’s the truly detailed and strange gameplay bits that are most memorably about the first game for me. Psi-controlling an alien, going into it’s inventory, priming all his grenades and leaving them in there… mmm.

I’m curious how “free” the destructibility is, i.e. whether you can shoot out a building’s walls exactly where you hit it with a rocket or if it’s more of a scripted thing where a gas station just has an “asplode now” trigger and that’s it.

This worries me a lot too, it’s such a wonderful feature in the original would be the worst shame for it to be over simplified so that some textures change when things are shot at rather than proper destruction and removal of objects

I’m no expert on the new system but in a way the time unit system was a “blank canvas” taking into account a gazillion factors you could manage to your advantage if you wanted.

For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t have minded them going with a real-time but easily stoppable approach like X-Com: Apocalypse. It offered the exact same options (actually, you could switch to turn-based at any time!) and felt great.

Pretty much what Hons said. Because it was so fine-grained, the TU system allowed for a number of cool design elements —

Soldiers could gain more TU as they gained experience.

Small, sub-movement actions like reloading, moving a grenade from belt to hand, or crouching down could be modeled in terms of their time cost. (One of the coolest things: moving a grenade from belt to hand was slightly more expensive than, for example, shoulder to hand, but less expensive than backpack to hand. So you could make your commandos MAXIMUM PRO TACTICAL by optimizing where they put everything.)

Pro’s: Allows for more finely detailed turns as these fine gentlemen have pointed out.

Con’s: Makes all actions that bit more fiddly.
How often does it actually make a difference?

It’s a trade-off between those times when it actually does allow you to do something cool and the other times when it’s just a bit more hassle. I’m not sure there’s a definitive right and wrong here. It’s a judgement call depending on what your design priorities are and how it works together with the rest of the game.

With move + shoot the optimal tactic is usually blindingly obvious. Is there anywhere better to move to? Move there. Is there anything to shoot at? Shoot it.

With time units you have to balance your priorities much more carefully, you can’t have your cake and eat it every time like move + shoot. Want to move to better cover/firing position? Ok, lose TUs for one of your shots then. Shot an enemy but he’s not down? Do you go for broke and shoot again and have no TUs to move or hedge your bets and get behind cover?

Essentially, TUs give you a great deal more options, argueably making the game more exciting and mentally stimulating.

The guys at Firaxis tried the game with TU’s first, and then tried it with move+action, and there was a consensus that the m+a option was more fun for THEIR game. I say ‘their’ in big letters as although it is a remodel of a classic, there are a lot of changes going on and it will be a different beast than the original. They say they have a ‘Mutator Friday’ thing too, where every friday they add/change something in the game they think could work, and see if it actually does. It’s all in the interviews that gameinformer had with the devs.

Essentially, TUs give you a great deal more options, argueably making the game more exciting and mentally stimulating.

No. That’s a lie. SSI moved from time units to separate movement points in the late 80s and their games massively improved as a result. The tactical depth didn’t change much, even though the tactics required changed, but the playability sky rocketed. I’m not saying Firaxis hasn’t dumbed things down, but separating movement and actions isn’t necessarily a bad thing from a tactical perspective.

What I don’t understand is why there aren’t difficulty options that re-add elements like detailed Time Units in this case. Apparently, they actually had them in at one point but removed them. Why not keep them for people who want it? It’s such an unheard concept in gaming. The last time game difficulties actually affected gamemechanics was… Theme Park comes to my mind. You could set whether you wanted to manage food stocks and price negotiation in the difficulty settings. Why isn’t that standard by now?

Interesting. From the links it looks like will be very class and class-skill/perks focused.
For example heavies have a suppressive fire option, snipers get high ground perks etc..
Which sounds like could be cool.

Only worry I have is that by hard-baking these roles and tactics into the game fights could become a little formulaic, as compared to players fluidly creating roles and tactics.
(i.e heavy does suppressive thing because thats obviously what the class is for , while assault flanks because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and sniper climbs onto building because all his perks and gear tell you that’s where he should be).

I guess my fear is that to make it more less intimidating to xbox players they make tactical aspect a hand-holding, do-this-then-do-that affair.

Yeah I can’t say I am a fan of giving set classes to characters. I kind of like the “forging your own class” thing based on what your soldiers do in the field. If they use their pistol most of the time they get better at using their pistol, if they throw grenades their aim improves with grenades, if they use heavy weapons then they get stronger with those, etc, etc, so on and so forth.

Not that it’s a deal breaker or anything, it’s just what I would prefer. Hopefully it’s not all customized skill points and perk trees.

In the original, when I’d get to the point where the last alien(s) were holed up in the saucer and I had 8 troops positioned to out the doorway in a crossfire, I’d have the rookies practice tossing illumination balls around for skill improvement.

What i dont like about the abilities is that they instead of giving you more options actually limit your options. Why can’t my assault guy lay down coverfire with his rifle? Sure it probably wouldn’t be as effective but it could still work with enough fire etc.

This may just be incredibly picky but with all the bright and ‘pastely’ colours I’m afraid it will lose that fear factor the original game had (similar to Space Hulk). I can’t imagine the same trepidation when I turn every corner with this art style / graphics.

Wait, what? If anything, this looks less colorful than the original. I mean, yeah, if we’re talking about the parts of the original where your squad shows up in some unlit field, I suppose the bits that remain unlit are by definition not colorful, but we haven’t seen this game’s version of those bits yet. Well, I guess there was that shot with the G-Men in the forest, but still, the first game was pretty damn bright. That didn’t stop it from being scary, because the fear was all in the systems and sound design and music. If the ones in this are similarly grim, then the fear won’t be going anywhere.

Looking forward to more info about this game. But I cannot be bothered to go to “that American mag” for information. They’re the only American mag to get any gaming news and they advertise for games, not review them. Be nice to get some information from a source I trust, since I never trust information from a monopoly.
…
Also: If there is one thing I have learned from Saints Row 3, its this: Convenient exploding gas station is convenient.
…
God I hate that ‘word sandwich’ meme.

Well, it wasn’t intended as a full-on serious reply, to be sure. Though I do wish we had a little more variety over here in terms of gaming news. Always nice to get a second opinion or another pair of eyes to look at something, you know.

All stations in UFO: Enemy Unknown were inconveniently explosive, because they were present only during some Terror Missions, and the usual victims of explosions were fragile civilians. Terror units were often more resistant to explosions than to other forms of damage (cyberdiscs or sectopods), and none of them were more susceptible to it (despite Ufopaedia entry for chrysalids). So gas stations were rather unfunny, unless you define Fun as in Dwarf Fortress.

What? This is what passes for X-COM in this day and age? Why does EVERYONE have to start turning arcade-flavored space shooters into turn-based strategy remakes? Is Wing Commander: Land Squad next on the list? Disgusting.

So this is going to take a different approach than Xenonauts. That means we’ll have a variety of different X-Com-inspired TBS games available rather than a series of games that all feature near-identical mechanics. Call me crazy, but I think that sort of variety is a good thing.

Interesting stuff. BUT: does this mean they won’t be doing any significant expansion–i.e. more than DLC factions–for Civ V? I know it didn’t set the world on fire in the same way as IV and wasn’t beloved by long-time Civ fans, but it was far from a bad game and got a lot of improvement from patches. If naysayers for Civ–which had several very different sequels and spin-offs and what-have-you–could kill expansion development in a core, long-running franchise, what will they do when the rabid zealots of a long-defunct classic start coming out of the woodwork? Which, by the way, is already happening.

I’m really looking forward to this. Like others I hope they get the level of destructibility right. I want the option of levelling a town in the face of crysalids if it means a few extra squaddies escape a fate of being infested.

Also, a good tech progression.

And flying power armour so that I can relive my Starship Troopers fantasies.